The Horrors of Hopton Heath

There's a new post up from me at Mysterious Universe that focuses upon two of the strangest stories to have ever crossed my path. That both of them came from the same area - the site of a famous, centuries-old military confrontation in central England, the Battle of Hopton Heath, makes the whole thing even weirder.

I begin the article like this:

"Sometimes, as a writer of mysteries of the paranormal kind, I end up being the recipient of tales that are not just bizarre; they’re actually beyond bizarre! And what is without doubt one of the absolute oddest, and potentially most disturbing, stories I have ever heard came from a family who, in an October 2000 interview with me, maintained that, in 1979, while driving near the site of the 1643 Battle of Hopton Heath, Staffordshire, England, they came across a shocking sight: namely, the badly damaged body of a very strange-looking young woman sprawled at the side of the road 'that looked like a hit-and-run.' The woman, says the resolutely-anonymous family, was naked, had a head of long, dark hair, a mouth full of elongated teeth, and a pair of legs that were fused together below the knees,'like a seal' Yep, distinct shades of mermaids, no less.

"The story – provided to me when I was writing a weekly column in England’s Chase Post newspaper at the time, called The C-Files – gets even more controversial by the claim that the family elected not to inform the authorities of what they had found, and quickly continued on their journey. To this day, their action, or, far more accurately, their utter lack of action, hangs over them like a veritable sword of Damocles; or so they collectively assert, at least."

And here's the link to the complete piece.